Fall of the House of Usher
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Infused with imagery so desolately macabre and so eerily detailed as to contain even reflections of ?remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows?(p1345) the entirety of the account in Poe's ?The Fall of the House of Usher? lends to interpretation as a nightmare (possibly opiate induced) of the speaker. In this light, the proprietor, Roderick can be identified as
the intellectual, cloistered, introspective aspect of the speaker's psyche, tortured by flights of fancy and bizarre, irrational fears of the life-stimulating. Indeed, ?His reserve had been always excessive and habitual?(p1345), as had been his studies of art, literature, and music. Madeline embodies salvational escape from this intense, isolated intellectualization, and could provide such if only she too were not kept entombed by her brother and physicians...